


Making It Official

by Tricki



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Snarky married potions masters, hogwarts adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tricki/pseuds/Tricki
Summary: “I maintain that Cackle’s is vastly superior to Hogwarts, if only for the ability to complete a transference spell on the grounds.”Severus shakes his head, lips quirked with affection.  “I would suggest years at Cackle’s might have left your legs in need of slightly more activity.”
Relationships: Hardbroom (Worst Witch) & Severus Snape
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	Making It Official

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! I hope you enjoy this story. It was one of the earliest ideas I had for them and it wouldn't leave my head. Now it's been sitting on my hard drive for a couple of months and I think it's time to share it with you.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who reads, reviews, and gives kudos to my Hecate/Severus fics. I am deeply in love with them still and it makes me very happy not to be alone on this little ship of ours. 
> 
> xx

There’s a large part of Hecate that wishes she could control her emotions when she is with Severus Snape as deftly as she does when he’s not in her presence.  
But, in spite of herself, in spite of years of work to wrestle her emotions into something small and manageable, Hecate loves him. She loves him dreadfully and urgently and enormously. She is delighted by him; by his company, by his every little gesture, and mostly by the way he loves her.

  
The depth of her feelings has always surprised Hecate. She has also been surprised by how much she has come to enjoy their spontaneous adventures. Tonight’s activities are the kind she would have balked at viciously before she fell in love with him –and the kind he never would have proposed before he fell in love with her. They are the kind of actions for which both would give students unforgettable and unending detentions. They are the kind of antics neither ever expected to have a reason to get up to.

  
“Severus, where on earth are you taking me?” She demands. Her face is contorted with disapproval, but the tone of her voice is touched with laughter, lightness. Her voice is all Severus has to go on. He is leading her by the hand through a dark, narrow passageway within Hogwarts. She estimates they’ve been walking for fifteen minutes, up and then down this little bluestone tube. Severus’ wand is extended before him, throwing light across the walls and floor ahead of them. There are gargoyles and other sporadic pieces of stonemasonry on the walls, some holding torches that seem not to have been illuminated for centuries. Every now and then there is a door, but Severus pays them no mind. Hecate is impressed by how intimately he knows the sighing old castle.

  
“I maintain that Cackle’s is vastly superior to Hogwarts, if only for the ability to complete a transference spell on the grounds.”  
Severus shakes his head, lips quirked with affection. “I would suggest years at Cackle’s might have left your legs in need of slightly more activity.”  
He feels the temperature rise in the little tunnel as her anger rises. This is exactly what he hoped would happen.

  
As she is pondering how precisely she will exact her revenge for his comment, he slows before her. Hecate does not stop at his cue, but draws up behind him, pressing herself into his back and inhaling the scent of him deeply. Even after years of sharing her life with him, Hecate remains entranced by it. She is fascinated by the perfect jigsaw puzzle of their clasped hands. She is still utterly in love with him - which is a surprising state of affairs for a woman who never expected to love anyone.

  
Once her head has cleared enough from the heady rush of her husband’s scent, Hecate observes that Severus has not stopped them before another of the many doors they’ve passed, but a blank stretch of wall. She frowns, her lips quirking with impatience.

  
Severus flicks his wand and the word “ _Revelio_ ” rolls from his lovely lips. An ornate golden door paints itself across the wall before them.  
“Very crafty, my love.” She says, a note of impatience still creeping into her voice. “Will this door take us to our destination? Wherever that may be...”  
“Patience is one of the many virtues for which I married you.” Severus is half smiling when he turns to meet his wife’s large brown eyes.  
She exhales with irritation as a warm smile forces itself onto her face.  
“Your clear and open communication is one of the virtues for which I married you.” She retorts. Severus bends forward as if to kiss her, but withdraws at the last moment and returns his attention to the door, which he opens with another flick of his wand. He turns to block her view, and orders her with a wry smile – the kind that always makes her stomach misbehave – “close your eyes.” She glares at him. She glares at him and glares at him and... obliges him, as she generally does.  
He steps forward, bringing her with him, and mutters “There is one step.”  
Hecate, faithfully, keeps her eyes closed, but she replies with no room for argument. “No there isn’t.” He smiles at her, at the way she combines proprioception and magical intuition at moments like this.

  
They are both smiling when they enter the room, but Hecate’s face becomes even paler than normal once she opens her eyes and realises where they are. A jaunt that has been filled with laughter and gentle teasing is now something that seems, well, potentially rather serious. Hecate says her husband’s name with obvious trepidation. The air around Severus is tangibly crackling with mischief. His wife’s grasp has tightened around his hand; the tips of her stiletto point nails are biting into his skin in a way that is both painful and somehow delicious.  
“You’re right. I apologise for implying your legs are anything less than perfect.” He purrs the sentence delightfully, before brushing a kiss to her blood red lips.  
She ticks her head to one side once he’s stepped back, a silent acknowledgement of his compliment, but it diverts her only momentarily.  
“Why are we in Albus’ office?” She surveys the warmly glowing room over her husband’s shoulder. “And more to the point, why have we snuck into Albus Dumbledore’s office through a secret tunnel?”  
“Because Albus is not here.”  
Hecate’s eyebrow arches so dramatically that she doesn’t actually need to vocalise “That is hardly an answer to my question, Severus.”  
“You’ve made good on your promise, Professor Snape.” A voice somewhere deeper in the room pipes up. Hecate is instantly suspicious. The voice does not belong to Albus, or anyone else she knows.  
“ _Severus_.” The word is an overt warning now.  
“Perhaps I might be able to answer your questions, Mistress Hardbroom? Since your husband seems to have done a sub-standard job of it.”  
Hecate still can’t find the source of the voice. It seems to be coming from the walls somehow.  
“Yes, perhaps that is the most reasonable way to proceed.” Severus draws a stool before her with his wand, gestures for her to sit. She is acutely aware that he has directed her to sit facing the door, with her back to the vast room. It is not a decision Hecate would have made, and the look she gives her husband clearly says _‘Do not test my trust...’_

  
Hecate bends and runs her fingers over an inexplicable layer of dust on the newly conjured stool, which is much too low for someone of her height. “Why am I sitting on this... object?”  
“I am ensuring you have the full experience.” Severus says, voice coming from somewhere behind her as he sweeps deeper into the warmly glowing office.  
Hecate folds stiffly onto the stool, a look of intense scepticism on her face. “The full experience of what, exactly?”  
The longer this goes on the terser her tone becomes, and this only increases her husband’s amusement.  
“Patience, Cate.” He drawls with an ill-concealed smile. He loves taunting her more than he should. When he turns back to her, she looks ridiculous in the most perfect way. Her knees are higher than her hips on the little stool. Her hands are sitting delicately in her lap, but her fingers are playing games with the air, with each other. He is waiting for the moment she puts some intent behind it and coloured sparks or flames spring from between her lethal fingers.  
“Is running thin, Severus.”  
“She really is your type isn’t she, Severus?” The rolling male voice behind her says, and by this point a note of genuine anxiety is creeping into her. That is, until Severus comes back within her view, and is unaccompanied.  
“Who - ?”  
“That would be me, Mistress Hardbroom.” Says the tattered old hat in her husband’s hands, a tear opening and closing like a mouth.  
“Is - are you - the Sorting Hat?” It’s so far from what she was expecting, Hecate fumbles the sentence.  
“Indeed I am,  
And soon you’ll see  
In just which house  
You’re meant to be.  
Not chance or fate  
But logic clear  
Will make your house colours  
Soon appear.”

  
Hecate’s eyebrows are higher than Viktor Krum will be in several years time when he will almost collide with a muggle aeroplane in an attempt to catch a snitch. But she is on the verge of smiling in spite of herself.  
She’s still wrestling with her lips when she says “This is what you’ve been planning.” Severus does not respond. “This is why we’ve broken into the office of the most powerful wizard of our time - who also happens to be your employer?”  
“Yes.” Severus drawls with a wry grin in his voice. He controls his lips well enough, but his eyes crease with affection. Hecate is honestly a little enchanted by her husband’s behaviour.  
“Darling.” She says calmly. “I think we have a weight of evidence - ”  
“ - And I contend we need a decision from the ultimate arbiter.”  
Her expression changes, her eyebrows coming in upon themselves. She looks... worried. She lifts her hand and takes his, freeing it from the brim of the Sorting Hat.  
“Severus,” she looks at him so earnestly he thinks he might have fallen a little more in love with her in the moment. “What if I’m... not?”  
He massages her fingers between his gently, then releases them and curves his palm around her face. “Then, at long last, I shall have something to hold against you.”  
She laughs on an exhale, and he sees her shoulders relax a little. And this is the moment he chooses to let his face become perfectly blank, and say “However, I reserve the right to divorce you, should you be sorted into Gryffindor.” Hecate glares ferociously at him. He does not allow his face to break into the smile her expression would normally elicit.  
“Sometimes I deeply question my love for you.” She retorts.

  
He shushes her softly, before placing the hat on her head. The Sorting Hat does exactly as Severus has bid, and gives the Deputy Head of Cackle’s Academy ‘the full experience’. It chants at length about the founders of the ancient school, the virtues and values that each prized. She relates, of course, to Slytherin. She is shrewd and precise and able to get her own way, but her thirst for knowledge briefly gives her pause that she might indeed be sorted into Ravenclaw. At the conclusion of the sermon, the Sorting Hat begins speaking only to her, like a voice in her head.  
“You are strong leader, I see. Capable. Clever, very clever. With almost perfect retention. You crave knowledge, Hecate Hardbroom. You hide the part of you that also craves approval. You have learnt the skill of only breaking the rules when you can guarantee the outcome. Shrewd. Very shrewd. You are one of the easiest cases of my career, my dear.”  
 _And yet you seem to be taking rather a long time of it..._ Hecate thinks, forgetting that the Hat can read her thoughts.  
“Your husband said to give you the full experience. I thought some commentary might help pass the time.”  
“I suppose it has.” Hecate says aloud, making Severus’ eyebrow rise. The longer the hat takes, the more tense he becomes. In all honesty, it has never crossed his mind that she wouldn’t be in Slytherin. She is everything he expects one of his students to be - everything he craves in them. Intelligent. Ambitious. Tenacious. Disciplined. But she is also brave – one of the bravest people he has ever met – and that might just tip her into the camp of his sworn nemeses, the Gryffindors.

  
“Well, it must be - Slytherin!” The hat proclaims. Hecate slumps imperceptibly with relief.  
Severus lifts the Hat from her head with a pleased smile, and as he does, the Hat says “Congratulations, Professor Snape. You have found yourself the perfect bride.” The couple shares a knowing look before Severus goes to return the Sorting Hat to its rightful place. Hecate stands and dusts the skirt of her dress. With a wave of her hand the stool disappears again.  
“Congratulations,” Severus says when he returns to her side and kisses her softly.  
“Were you worried?” Hecate queries.  
“I didn’t doubt for a moment. And you?”  
“I must admit I was a touch... anxious.”  
“All for effect, Mistress Hardbroom.” The Sorting Hat calls down from its ledge.  
“Thank you for ensuring I received ‘the full experience’ on top of your careful arbitration.” Hecate calls in the direction of the Sorting Hat.  
“A pleasure to be occupied more than one day a year, young lady.” The Hat says, before settling itself.  
“Could we please leave Albus’ office before someone notices you’re missing?” Severus acquiesces to the request, leading her back into the blackened tunnel, murmuring ‘Lumos’ to his wand, and concealing the door once more with a silent charm.  
“That must absolutely terrify the first years.” She remarks as they begin their journey through god knows what parts of the castle. She is considerably more relaxed in this direction than she was in the last.  
“Yes, it does.” Severus confirms, and she smiles a little, because his confirmation is based on both observation and experience. She can hardly imagine him, eleven years old and sitting in front of a full Great Hall to have his future told.  
Hecate smiles wickedly and slips her hand into his. “I must speak to Ada about changing our allocation practices at Cackle’s.”  
Severus smirks. “And some part of you doubted your true house.”


End file.
